As today's world is more inclined towards continuous change and is more into getting things done quickly to accommodate other work and the workload being hectic, it would get really difficult for people to make time for the same work at different times in a particular span of time. Yet due to certain procedures which are necessary and essential to be complied with, people are entitled to make time for the same work as it would need utmost attention and is unavoidable.
FIXATION OF TRADEMARK SHOW CAUSE HEARING:
Recently, the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks (CGPDTM) was brought to attention that there are various attorneys who are facing lot of inconvenience with the system of Show-Cause Hearing.
The Trademark Show-Cause Hearing comes into picture when there are certain objections raised by other parties to which the response provided is not satisfactory to the Registrar. The Registrar calls upon the Applicant who is the proprietor or the trademark agent / trademark attorney to attend the hearing. This would be given in the form of a notice to the proprietor or his agent. The proprietor would be expected to showcase the reasons as to why the mark should not be refused from being fixed.
The responsibility would lie on the proprietor or the agent to satisfy the Registrar with relevant reasons as to why the mark should be allowed to be used. The proprietor shall be in a position to prove the distinctiveness of the mark from the others and respond to the objections raised. If the arguments put forth by the proprietor or his agent satisfy the Registrar, he would pass the mark and advertise the same in the Journal.
After looking into the inconvenience faced by the attorneys to appear and attend the hearings on a frequent basis from various location, CGPDTM came up with the clubbing of the hearings of the attorneys on a particular fixed date to avoid any frequent visits by them for various trademark hearing matters. The frequent visits for the Show- Cause hearings has been altered and modified and has come into effect from June 2018. This would prove advantageous to the attorneys as they are accustomed to a hectic schedule and have bundles of work on their hands.
Hence, this step of modification brought forth by the CGPDTM in the recent times keeping in mind the inconvenience faced by the attorneys would prove to be time saving and feasible for them and spare them with lots of time to do other work which is on their hands.
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